The sword attacks at a medium pace, and two of the three strikes put up bleeding. It simply doesn't put them up fast enough, and you have to stay in Melee range. Thankfully, with the sword its not hard to keep the target near, but it still makes putting up bleeds a pain.

Flurry is fantastic, but the bleeds don't last long enough to keep a reliable uptime, its fantastic burst damage, but nothing more. Its also counterable.

The only real way we have of stacking conditions quickly is by dual-wielding swords. Having to use two weapon slots just to get enough stacks up quickly, and even then, if they cleanse the Bleeds from the Riposte and Ranged Cripple from the offhand sword, then its GG. You have to wait 15+ seconds before you can do that again, and you're back to chasing them around with your auto attack.

The Rifle only applies bleed with one attack, and it fires very slowly. It applies the bleeds at the same rate the sword does. Its just not meant as a bleed weapon, with only one ability stacking bleeds.

Compare this to the Ranger's shortbow. Low damage, super fast.. made for conditions. Ontop of that, they have poison, a cripple, swiftness and an escape move, and a stun/daze. And its ranged.

The only way we can run conditions properly, is by using dual swords and its lackluster at best. Its not completely God awful, but its pretty bad.

This means to do damage, we need to go crit/power builds. You can't really have one without the other, becasuse you'll do no damage. Where as you can just stack condition damage, and do plenty.

This means condition damage builds are free to pick up other stats. Power and Crit builds can pick up less extra stats, because they need two lots of states to make the offensive part of the build work.

This is the issues with Warrior's right now. We can go offense, we can go defense. We can't go balanced, because we'll end up too heavily in one camp.

Possible fixes?

Make the main hand sword apply bleeds with all 3 swings, and reduce the direct damage accordingly. Its still melee, so its hard to stick on a target, but at least we'll have a solid way to apply bleeds without using 15 second cooldowns.

TL,DR: We have no good condition damage builds, due to the weapons that 'support' conditions not applying them fast/well enough. This means we need to go power/crit, as opposed to just condition damage. We need to stack two stats to do damage, as opposed to one. Meaning less stats available for defense, meaning lack of balanced builds.

TL,DR: We have no good condition damage builds, due to the weapons that 'support' conditions not applying them fast/well enough. This means we need to go power/crit, as opposed to just condition damage. We need to stack two stats to do damage, as opposed to one. Meaning less stats available for defense, meaning lack of balanced builds.

Discuss and flame on.

I've been using a lot of shield/sword recently, and axe/axe to build adr. I primarily focus on dmg mitigation through defense and regen and pumping adr with weaponswapping and taking dmg. (I use the healing signet for regen and have the trait for adr based regen so it keeps me alive for a prolonged period especially if the opposing player doesn't have high dps output.)

I always have flurry on cooldown because my adr pumps that quickly. I've found lots of success with the way I play but I often have issues with others who have condition builds.

...but I'm not saying my build is great but condition dmg is one of its focuses and it has worked well for me.

The only issue at the moment is, that it is weak against thieves (no chance to use longbow if the enemy is invisible 90% of the time and evading in melee the other 10%), mass illusion mesmers (takes too long to kill illus) and retaliation guardians (you just die). As these are currently the FOTM classes it is hard to play this build in sPvP right now.

constantly stacking 10-11 stacks of bleed and up to 20 with flurry. How is that not reliable? Even if other pack condition removal, you can restack them instantly.

Edit: honestly curious, have you tried bleed builds in sPvP? it is so easy to keep a constant 10 stacks of bleed on a target it's not even funny, warriors can pull off serious bleeding, thought this was known since BWE, and especially since the warrior hasn't even been changed much since BWE3

constantly stacking 10-11 stacks of bleed and up to 20 with flurry. How is that not reliable? Even if other pack condition removal, you can restack them instantly.

Edit: honestly curious, have you tried bleed builds in sPvP? it is so easy to keep a constant 10 stacks of bleed on a target it's not even funny, warriors can pull off serious bleeding, thought this was known since BWE, and especially since the warrior hasn't even been changed much since BWE3

I use sword/board + rifle with a bleed centric build and I find that I can stack the bleeds high and fast. I know people knock on bleed builds because other classes have condition removal, but you can reapply those bleeds instantly while they have to wait to remove them again. I run 10/30/30/0/0 and I have fun with it. 2 Defy Pains, Last Chance for a quickness proc, Crackshot for piercing rifle shots, and of course bleeds ticking away gives me some burst, and some defense. It might not be as viable as other specs but it works for me.

I use sword/board + rifle with a bleed centric build and I find that I can stack the bleeds high and fast. I know people knock on bleed builds because other classes have condition removal, but you can reapply those bleeds instantly while they have to wait to remove them again. I run 10/30/30/0/0 and I have fun with it. 2 Defy Pains, Last Chance for a quickness proc, Crackshot for piercing rifle shots, and of course bleeds ticking away gives me some burst, and some defense. It might not be as viable as other specs but it works for me.

Disagree, a crit/bleed build with some earth sigil on weapons and krait/afflicted is devastating as dual sword anyway the optic of warrior is damage thru burst, you see my point, you can also enjoy your 30k hp pool if you playing shout, makes you an impossible to kill annoying warrior, you should try !

Warriors have a great High Power/Control build, Decent support for both Spvp/WvW, and a strong Crit Burst build.

Why, oh why would you play a warrior and want to go condition.

If you were you have Rifle and Sword MH. Which only is bleed. If you go a condition build you need to have cover conditions as well.

Simply Warrior is not meant to be a condition profession

He's certainly meant to be, but is poorly balanced to be one.

Really, this game has two types of professions. Just simple, normal ones, you press a button you a get a certain effect types and the "shittons of AoE everything" types, like Mesmers, Guards and Engies, to a lesser extent Necros. A condition build only works on the last ones, because it's impossible to counter and it sprays all kinds of conditions on you passively.

I main Ranger, 2nd main a thief, and am leveling a warrior. Just throwing that out there, that I love and hate all three for different reasons, before I start comparing them so you don't think I'm 'too" biased.

Warrior can bleed better than any other proff in a frontal cone, imo. Best single target, small aoe bleed spec available. Thief can get a slightly better aoe spec, but only because it's a larger/more-target aoe. Warrior tick for tick, still does bleeds better. There really isn't anything that touches them. 2nd a Longbow to add burning, or rifle for long range bleeds. But I cannot fathom how anyone could say that warrior doesn't have condition builds! That's insanity.

OP, you're on something. Get sober and then let's take a look at some traits.

Arms. /end topic

Kidding, sort of...no not really. Arms is amazing. So much synergy it hurts. Ok, check it out... 300 precision and 300 Condition damage, so far, that sound just fine! Lets look at those traits... Oh, what do you know, the first one is 33% chance to bleed on crit. GG, synergy already. It is a 2 second bleed, and a 2 second blled is hard to extrend long enough to improve it at all, you need a whole 50% duration... Possible with 30 traits and rune/sigil...oh, nevermind, we are a warrior, luls...lets just get the 50% bleed duration trait for that. Yes, it is absolutely insane how big this one trait is...but don't argue with it, get it.

Next you get 10% critchance on Bursts, ah more synergy... hey, let's grab that 10% crit with sword trait too, why not? That's only +20% crit on Flurry... trivial, psh. Ok, next up is our 25 pointer, Increases damage to bleeding foes by 10%...oh the synergy is too much to handle, get it off me!!! The last one is up to you, go with signets if you feel..iono, nubby, vulnerabily, swiftness, quickness...piercing rifle, yo got choices plenty...worst case you can save 5 trats...but I'd not.

Now, you got yourself some 50% duration on bleeds...and you wanna get silly with it? Well I'm glad, because I wanna get silly with it too! 10 Points in Strength, 3 Affliction Runes, 3 Krait Runes, and a Sigil of Agony in one of your swords. Guess what champ, you're now at +100% Bleed duration in sPvP. Only other proff that can even do that is Necro, and they have to work a LOT harder for it. We didn't even really have to try...

Alright, now, throw on a rabid amulet, and a sigil of earth on your 2nd sword. Pick up your last 30 in Tactics. 6, 8, 12. Slot mend, fgj, omm, sio, and elite sig. Uptime of fury 100%+. Brings you to ~80% crit with sword and 1400 condition damage. (113 per bleed/s) Chance to proc bleeds on every attack 50% for 10 second, 27% for 4 seconds.

Ok, so in the 1.5 second attack cycle of autoattack alone. You get:

2 Bleeds that last 16 seconds (3600 damage)
Average of 1.5 Bleeds that last for 10 seconds (1695 damage)
Average of 0.8 Bleeds that last for 4 seconds (362 damage)

That's just the condition damage at base, and with auto attack. I'm not going to go into the math because it's slightly more complex for my next point...regardless, you will keep an average stack of 25 by just autto-attacking a target.... yes, by just auto-attacking you can keep up 25 stack of bleed.

And you "apply" bleeds at a rate of roughly 4k dps. (Ie you add 4,000 eventual damage of bleeds to the target per second you auto attack)

Anyway... warrior can condition like a champ, so like I said... get sober, then look at your traits and options again.

I didn't even get into the rifle or longbow builds...cuz there are those too.

A long while ago during the beta I used to breathe condition builds on the Warrior. I'll admit that I became disillusioned with the Sigil changes that occurred and switched to the Mesmer and then Engineer. I've since tried various builds again recently and really fallen in love with a current variant that I've been running.

What a Warrior loses in condition variety they make up for in sheer Control and Direct Damage. This build is amazing when paired up with one of the direct damage bursters, as the total amount of Immobilize this build offers is 15 seconds. Which is enough to regain all of the cooldowns to repeat those Immobilizes. Plus, it comes with a Knockback, Knockdown, and Stun paired with the incredibly Distracting Strikes trait. On top of that, 30 points in Strength and a Carrion Amulet gives you enough Power to have plenty of damage. Rampager's Amulet? Meh, the Sigil cooldowns ruin what Precision offers to this kind of build. Concerned about having too little Precision? Well you still have over 50% critical chance with the Sword and Fury.

It has it's weaknesses though. If you are Immobilized your only options are control, Shield Block, or the cast time on Mending. Even with 25k Health, it's not exactly durable to direct damage and lacks any Endure Pain options. It's possible you could trade out Balanced Stance for that, but I really like the assisted ability to stomp in a team fight. Condition removal is stronger against this build then say my Engineer builds, because there are simply less condition types and bleeds tend to be always on top of the priority for removal. It makes up for this with some direct damage, but frankly other condition types are better at it. I'd argue this is somewhat of a glass cannon that makes up for the lost defense with control.

It's near impossible to be kited though with all the Cripple and Immobilize. Even the Rifle has a lot of use in this build with it's 12 second bleed auto attacks and plenty of Power to make Volley worth using. If left unchecked, it's by far and away the highest amount of condition damage in the game. That shouldn't be the case though, so it's generally left to match the output of other condition damage users. It's not the best 1v1 condition build out there, but I'd argue it's one of the best in a 2v2 matchup. I was concerned about the Adrenaline at times, but Level 1 Flurries are for the most part good enough and Kill Shot is mediocre in this build.

Flurry's bleeds don't last long enough? Flurry is supposed to be a BURST skill like all the others. Too bad the GS one isn't so good compared to the others imo since I rarely run warbanner (4 min cooldown are you INSANE? The reviving downed is good but.... in that 4 mins you could have at least 50% uptime on some srs might and fury) or a bad transform.

The class is sooo close to a good condi spec too.
I honestly, after seeing tooltips was going to switch over from my ranger.
Flurry looked like a mother*ing truck.
With all the +crit traits and whatnot, hitting 10 times at 90~% crit rate, procing a 5s bleed on a 30% of the crits and a 7s one on 60% would have been roughly 8~k total in shortish duration bleeds.
And that's every 10~ seconds.
(for being left vulnerable for the 3~s cast and whatnot, I could live with that kind of return)

Longbows fire spreadshot lists a 2s burn from each arrow, that would be 6s of burning or 3.6k in burn dmg on that 6s CD. That is all around a lil better than the ranger's splitblade on axe mainhand
The longbow's spammable also hits twice every volley which make a higher hits/sec than the ranger shortbow, that combined whith how warriors get better procs from critting and more easily gotten fury... in the mists I was usually getting up to 7-8 bleed stacks from the crit procs on longbow alone (with fury up). The ranger spammable caps out at 6-8~ WITH FLANKING.
That and longbow was building adrenaline like a beast, the 'adrenaline on crit' trait along with it hitting twice and critting 60-80% of the time made 2-4 (on average 3.4) adrenaline a volley...
That with the SOLID immobilizing, less but better controlled cleansing, much better self healing and toughness, endure pain (WHICH BREAKS STUNS!! (unlike the ranger 'protect me')) and leaps threw that fire field... ugh it seemed like it'd be close to if not a lil better than the ranger at times.

Spoiler

The ranger has its pet (which does solid physical dmg without any stats in power), much better evading, poisons, better but not so controlled of cleansing, both weapon sets have ranged spammables, protect me is on a 48s CD (at least in my setup).

But flurry can only procs one sigil of earth bleed a cast (so you lose 3~k bleed dmg a flurry, or 37% of its dmg in a crit heavy setup).
The longbows fire volley actually only throws out a 1s burn per arrow instead of 2 (half dmg).
That really hurts.
Those were the main sources of condi dmg I was going to run short of the longbow's fire field...
The 5s CD weapon swap would have let me just throw them out pretty much on CD every time (to be pretty much constant burning, dodge or long imobs left and right and flurry just coming home with a truck of bleed stacks, that combined with allright spammable dmg and a decent mix of utility would have been a solid spec.)

Because of all that, critting with the sword for condition dmg is near worthless since flurry doesn't benifit and the spammable is melee and doesn't attack/hit notably fast, but the thing is, longbow needs crit to be a decent condition weapon... and critting was the builds main source of addrenaline...
That's what annoys me to no end.

Swapping out bolas depending on encounter
(for a stunbreak against spike thieves.
balanced stance for group fights since I probly can't save the elite signet for stability-stomps all the time, probly have to use it to full cleanse and throw up the fury/swiftness buffs more than not.
Fear me against those specs you have to interrupt (to stop heals or spikes or stealth rezes/stomps))
I was actually getting a bit ditsy before I tested stuff, flurrying people in their side (so they couldn't attack back) was going to be hellsa fun.
Kiters who normally are a joke to get flanking on would be a joke to pull it off on, other people you could just shield bash then sidestep out of the frontal arc before flurrying, or longbow immob or bolas into the same deal.
It would have been BRILLIANT in group fights with all the long duration immobilizes, solid dmg, high toughness/invulns/cleanses/healing (healing surge goes FOR HALF your health!!!! and gives 1 bar of adrenaline, LOL) too.

QFT. If conditions weren't so underpowered, I would say our 50% bleed duration trait is overpowered. If they ever remove 25 bleed cap on world event bosses then s/s bleed warriors will do mega dps.

If warriors had condi weapons comparable to any other class.
Yeah, it would be, but they don't.
(talking PvP not PvE)

Shinimas, on 12 October 2012 - 03:25 PM, said:

Really, this game has two types of professions. Just simple, normal ones, you press a button you a get a certain effect types and the "shittons of AoE everything" types, like Mesmers, Guards and Engies, to a lesser extent Necros. A condition build only works on the last ones, because it's impossible to counter and it sprays all kinds of conditions on you passively.

Not really...
Good single target condition dmg is good in tPvP, you just don't go chasing larger fights against aoe-cleansing/light-fielding bunker specs with it.
Case and point, my ranger.
The spec has the edge in the vast majority of 1v1s and allot of 2v2s.
Most roaming and even bunker specs (alone) don't have enough condition removal to make the specs dmg anything short of sublime, and the spec is rather defensive to boot.

I like distracting strikes on my hammer, had a look at your build, and can only see two sources for rupting; bulls charge and shield bash. Am I missing something? does the leg specialist trait when activated cause an interupt?

i like condition build on a warrior (it's fun to play) but i am not a fan of the longbow at all but... why not removing the 10 point from defense and strength and put them in tactics for the increased longbow range and the warhorn trait and then.... swap the shield for a warhorn. those 10 points in defence looks quite useless to me, and since you are going to be quite squishy for a warrior with a build like that, a non traited shield is not goig to help much

there is a problem with going full condition damage on a warrior, it is focused a LOT on flurry, without it to stack 9999999999 bleeds in a short time the damage output is quite low, and flurry that looks amusing on the paper, in a real fight can be quite a pain to use, a lot of the times you will have to cancel it to dodge nasty stuff or you end up slicing air......... but when you manage to land a full flurry on 2 or 3 people.... it's lovelly

Warhorn tends to be a bad weapon, the 10 point trait in arms along with 2 full cleanses and the shield block have it covered and then some (a different way of achieving the same thing, but I like the reliablity of full cleanses and the heal skill to get rid of movement impairing ones, that and shield block is a better dodge imo, and shield bash is a leap so gets the fire shield from the longbow's fire field and can stun out a person's heal or set up flurry)
And yeah flurry is tough to land, that's why bolas, shield bash, longbow (so I can kite, and the weapon immobilizes) and the 30~s of swiftness from the elite signet are there
I was thinking of 10 points in tactics for the imob on cripple (which would make it even easier) but the spec only had the sword cripple on a 15s CD so it seemed less usefull than the other two 10 point traits I grabbed (but that is just me).

Oh and longbow projectiles travel slow enough that a longer range on them wouldn't actually help much.
(at least from my experiences)

But yeah, flurry is a big deal in condi specs, the geomancy sigils are too though.
At least since flurry can't proc the earth sigil more than once so the weapon tends to work best with geomancy.

I like distracting strikes on my hammer, had a look at your build, and can only see two sources for rupting; bulls charge and shield bash. Am I missing something? does the leg specialist trait when activated cause an interupt?

Those are the only two interrupts in the build. The mere fact that it adds at least an additional thousand damage to those pieces of control however makes well worth the trait selection. It's likely to be far more then a thousand damage as well. Control and "duration damage" mix well together to begin with, and the Distracting Strikes trait fits perfectly into that concept.